


The Owl Looked Up

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-TSoT, Transitioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:52:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one is post TSoT. Some people might regard it as a "fix-it." To me it feels more like an attempt to sort out what I think I see when I watch the resolution of that episode, and all the little bits of timing and response...and try to factor in all the bits and pieces of development shown over three seasons. </p><p>Basic premises: that there's no great secret brooding anguish carried by any of these characters. That they are being written  in many ways as being very ordinary, even Sherlock. That far more than people expect, they are WYSIWYG characters: that if John says he's straight, and that he and Sherlock are not a couple, and he dates women and marries a woman, then he is probably right about himself. That Sherlock, whatever he is, is indeed most involved with John as his beloved friend--a friend who matters to him most of all because he has never, never expected to be someone's friend, much less his best friend, and it's changing him--as is adulthood, and the return from death, and the pressures of trying to reenter 'civilian' life. That Moffat and Gatiss are writing this as profound and mysterious, but as ORDINARY profundity and mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Owl Looked Up

He left the wedding early, with the reception just starting. He swung the Belstaff up and around, and huddled into it, collar protecting his nape against the damp May night air. Behind him he could hear the music still—“Oh, What a Night.”

He called a cab and gave the Baker Street address, but when he got there the entire house seemed too empty—John gone, Mrs. Hudson still at the reception, the rooms all still and dark. He hesitated on the sidewalk, then turned and crossed the road, heading straight for Regent’s Park across the way. Once there, he opened up his stride and ate up the ground.

You could walk in Regent’s Park for hours—loop around and around, take criss-crossing trails, repeat your path, double back. It was big enough to offer some space, small enough that he always knew that when he tired he was mere minutes from home.

The air was cool. The London sky was a purple glow, stars almost entirely obscured behind the mist off the river, the pollution, and the blaze of city lights. The trees whispered. He spent a time gingerly picking his way down the stream that ran at the northern perimeter of the park, then dropped down to sit on the pavement by the edge of the lake. He stripped off his good formal shoes, pulled off his black silk socks, rolled his trouser legs, and put his feet in the water. His feet shone white, luminous against the dark lake bottom. The ripples glinted and caught the park lights.

A policeman paced by, patrolling the park.

“Park’s closed,” he said, “time to move on.”

“Service,” Sherlock said, pulling out one of Lestrade’s warrant cards. “Need a place to think in peace and quiet.”

The copper let him alone, then, out of professional courtesy.

Sherlock leaned back and back, until he lay on the pavement feeling the faint heat of the day leaching back out of the pavement into the dark wool of his coat. His legs bent at the knee, and his feet remained in water up to the shin.

His pocket vibrated. He slipped the phone out. It was Mycroft. He considered hanging up. He changed his mind.

“What do _you_ want?” he growled, feeling surly annoyance with his brother. “If you wanted to talk to me you could have come to the night-do.”

“I’d have been dreadfully at sea if I had, then, wouldn’t I? Without you to talk to.”

“Who blabbed?”

“Miss Hooper was concerned.”

Of course Molly was concerned, Sherlock thought with a sigh.  Even with her new lover, she couldn’t seem to let go of her investment in him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“Regent’s Park. You can’t tell by tracing my phone on the GPS?”

“Asking seemed more polite.”

“You mean pretending to be polite gave you an excuse to call me and take my psychological temperature.”

“Perhaps,” Mycroft said, primly. “However, manners need no excuse.”

“Then why do you demonstrate them to me so seldom?”

“Said the pot to the kettle. Seriously, Sherlock, are you all right? I understood the party was to last into the wee-small hours.”

“I’m not all that fond of parties.”

“No. And, yet…

“And yet nothing. What did you say when I came home, about field work? ‘The noise, the people?’”

“You are not me. You never have been. I seem to recall you had a fondness for the club scene, at one time. Music. Dancing.”

The word “drugs” hovered unsaid.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock said, again. Then, unsure why, he added, “Mary’s pregnant.”

The silence that returned was bad…as bad as the silence earlier that day as Mycroft pointedly failed to comment on the inevitable changes that would be the result of John and Mary’s wedding.

At last his older brother said, simply, “You can stay the night at mine, you know. Your room’s always prepared.”

“No. I’m fine. Happy for them. It’s good. It’s all good. It was a good wedding. Even caught a murderer.”

“I’m sure that was the _piece de resistance_ of the day,” Mycroft said, dry and reserved. “A memorable _dénouement_ for all concerned.”

“You can be such an amazing twat, Mike,” Sherlock sighed. “Look, I’m fine. I’m five minutes from home. I’m clean, and intend to remain so. You can hang up now in complete confidence of my well-being. The very worst I intend to do is a rooftop run, and even that…” he smiled, looking up at the glowing purple sky, “…even that seems like too much work. I’m fine, brother-mine. Hang up. Go to sleep. Don’t worry.”

“I always worry.”

“Then worry about North Korea. Not about me. I’m fine. Good night, brother-dear.”

“Good night—brother-mine.”

It was one of the rare, rare times the two brothers used the endearments without irony—the times that made all the sniping, snapping other occasions mean nothing at all. The times that established between them both that beneath the irritation, the envy, the rivalry, the resentments, the misunderstandings, there was something that bound them in true and abiding fraternal love. When Mycroft closed the connection, Sherlock lay there, quiet and at peace, warm from the pavement, warm from his brother’s concern, even warm from his love of his best friend and his best friend’s wife.

He was, he thought, honestly happy about the baby. He remembered his first stunned, thrilled excitement as the one-too-many deductions came thundering into his mind, overwhelming everything else, including his intention of collecting his dance with the amusing and appealing Janine. He remembered his own laughter and joy as he told Mary and John, watched their faces, basked in his own anticipation of their new adventure. Even remembering, he smiled—a sincere, broad grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes and stretched his cheeks and set his pulse dancing.

John was going to be a father. His dear, amazing, unexpected friend John was going to have a child. Marvelous Mary, in all her funny, droll quirks, was going to be a mother.

They were, he knew, going to be marvelous at it.

He honestly wasn’t sad the child was coming. He wasn’t even really sad that it meant he was no longer their surrogate baby, though he was just barely honest enough to concede privately that he’d miss the pampering and the position as center of attention.

It was when they turned to each other, prepared to follow his orders to them, prepared to dance, that it really began to sink in. They were sailing away on an adventure together, an adventure into foreign waters—an adventure he would only ever witness from the distant shore. They would always love him. He would always be there for them—for all three of them. He even trusted them to make a place in their lives and hearts for him. But what they were, and where they’d sail, would be a private venture. One he could watch, but not take part in as more than the Best Man.

What ached, in new and frightening ways, was a sudden yen to set sail in kind. To see the same distant shores, and explore strange pirate waters he’d never imagined—never thought he could want. Should want. Would want. To drop anchor in peaceful bays, dive down into crystal waters and come up laughing and shaking the water from his hair, only to look up into the face of some woman laughing down at him, smiling.

“Well, glad to see you’ve pulled, Sherlock, what with murderers running riot at my wedding,” John had said, when he’d seen his best man and his wife’s maid of honor together in the low-lit room off the main reception hall.

Sherlock remembered the shiver he’d felt at what John had seen clear as day. As though John Watson had seen them dance, heard them talk, known first-hand the confession Sherlock had trusted the dark, laughing girl with. Had been there when she’d said, “I wish you weren’t…whatever it is you are.” And he, with his heart thundering beneath his calm, had said “I know.” And considered telling her that no matter what it was, it didn’t rule out—options.

John, seeing them, had believed instantly and without question that Sherlock had pulled. That he, Sherlock Holmes, had drawn a girl to his side. A girl he liked. A girl he…wanted. Who wanted him.

A girl he’d turned to look for when the dream of John and Mary sailing into uncharted seas set him yearning to travel along the same course, suddenly, and know the same foreign shores.

He’d never expected to live, he thought to himself. First it had been the arrogant melodrama of his youth, when all Byronic young men expect to die before they turn thirty. Then it had been the work in the field, with Mycroft. Then…then it had been everything going wrong. Then…the drugs.

Even as he had passed thirty, started up the long, slow hill toward forty, he hadn’t even thought to live long enough or settle enough or become human enough to contemplate that particular voyage of discovery. More, for years he’d sworn to himself with acid certainty that only the mediocre wanted it. Could possibly want it. Genius was a solitary calling. Sentiment his enemy.

They had turned to each other, John and his Mary, laughing and tender, and swept into the dance, their faces radiant and alive with the excitement and hope and fear of the day’s promises and revelations. Every move, every expression had shouted out the message of how extraordinary the “ordinary” could be, and how precious.

He’d turned, then, to find the dark, sloe-eyed girl. The one who was as steady as John, as tolerant and laughing as Lestrade. Who danced so dreadfully, and accepted him saying so with no more than a chuckle and a compliment to his own skills. Who teased him in mid-deduction, sly and sexy and mischievous.

It had never occurred to him that she would have followed his advice as the dance picked up and he left her to fend for herself alone. That she’d actually check out that sorry little excuse for a man he’d pointed her at. That far from drawing her into his arms, he’d be alone. Nor had he known that it would matter.

That John and Mary would dance away, sail away, summoned to a future Sherlock had never even thought to dream of…and that he’d suddenly want to be summoned in kind.

He slipped the phone out of his pocket and considered dialing Mycroft back. He would ask, yet again, “Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us? They care so much.”

No. He wouldn’t. If he did, he’d have to admit, at some point, that he cared too. That he even knew Mycroft cared.

Above a bird cried, high-pitched, haunting.

“I have been reborn,” Sherlock said. “Died and been reborn.”

He would live.

He would soon see forty. Fifty? Perhaps sixty?

He sat up, and sighed. He found his shoes and socks. He shoved the socks deep in the shoes, and hooked the shoes with two fingers, letting them dangle as he stood. He looked at the lake.

Far out in the middle  a toy sailboat floated, abandoned, lit by park lights and moonlight and the opal glow of the city beyond.

“The owl and the pussy cat went to sea,” he thought.

Maybe, he thought, I will ask Mary that girl Janine’s address and phone number.

She won’t have all that much fun with that moron I pointed her at, after all.

She seemed to…like me.

She never told me to piss off, either.

Maybe I’ll call her.

Maybe…maybe there will be a case. A case that would give him an excuse.

He could teach her to dance.

He went home, then, alone—but singing softy to himself, “They dined on mince, and slices of quince which they ate with a runcible spoon, and hand in hand by the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon….”

 

The title and the final lines of this story are drawn from Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat." You can find it [here.](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171941)


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